The journal of Critical Review has in the past published a series of essays regarding the affects of knowledge and ideology on political behaviour. Jeffrey Friedman’s essay on the topic of belief systems in mass political opinion is available for free for reading.
The essay examines theories of “choice between rule by the politically ignorant masses and rule by the ideologically constrained— which is to say, the doctrinaire—elites. On the one hand, lacking comprehensive cognitive structures, such as ideological “belief systems,” with which to understand politics, most people learn distressingly little about it. On the other hand, a spiral of conviction seems to make it difficult for the highly informed few to see any aspects of politics but those that confirm the cognitive structures that organize their political perceptions.This is a troubling situation for any consequentialist democratic political theory, according to which what is crucial is the electorate’s (and subsidiary decision makers’) ability to make informed policy judgments, not their possession of willful but uninformed political “attitudes.” Any political theorist who does not take democracy to be an end in itself (regardless of its consequences) should be concerned about Converse’s findings.”
Filed under: Politics
